Varney the Vampire eBook

“My name ain’t Jones,” he muttered,
“if I don’t be one to his one for that;
I’ll do something that shall make him remember
what it is to insult a respectable tradesman.
I’ll never forgive such an insult. It is
dark, and that’s why it is he has dared to do
this.”

Filled with dire thoughts and a spirit of revenge,
he looked from side to side to see with what he could
effect his object, but could espy nothing.

“It’s shameful,” he muttered; “what
would I give for a little retort. I’d plaster
his ugly countenance.”

As he spoke, he placed his hands on some pales to
rest himself, when he found that they stuck to them,
the pales had that day been newly pitched.

A bright idea now struck him.

“If I could only get a handful of this stuff,”
he thought, “I should be able to serve him out
for serving me out. I will, cost what it may;
I’m resolved upon that. I’ll not
have my wind knocked out, and my inside set on fire
for nothing. No, no; I’ll be revenged on
him.”

With this view he felt over the pales, and found that
he could scrape off a little only, but not with his
hands; indeed, it only plastered them; he, therefore,
marched about for something to scrape it off with.

“Ah; I have a knife, a large pocket knife, that
will do, that is the sort of thing I want.”

He immediately commenced feeling for it, but had scarcely
got his hand into his pocket when he found there would
be a great difficulty in either pushing it in further
or withdrawing it altogether, for the pitch made it
difficult to do either, and his pocket stuck to his
hands like a glove.

“D—­n it,” said the grocer,
“who would have thought of that? here’s
a pretty go, curse that fellow, he is the cause of
all this; I’ll be revenged upon him, if it’s
a year hence.”

The enraged grocer drew his hand out, but was unable
to effect his object in withdrawing the knife also;
but he saw something shining, he stooped to pick it
up, exclaiming as he did so, in a gratified tone of
voice,

“Ah, here’s something that will do better.”

As he made a grasp at it, he found he had inserted
his hand into something soft.

“God bless me! what now?”

He pulled his hand hastily away, and found that it
stuck slightly, and then he saw what it was.

“Ay, ay, the very thing. Surely it must
have been placed here on purpose by the people.”

The fact was, he had placed his hand into a pot of
pitch that had been left by the people who had been
at work at pitching the pales, but had been attracted
by the fire at Sir Francis Varney’s, and to see
which they had left their work, and the pitch was
left on a smouldering peat fire, so that when Mr.
Jones, the grocer, accidentally put his hand into
it he found it just warm.

When he made this discovery he dabbed his hand again
into the pitch-pot, exclaiming,—­